Where Were You
by varietyofwords
Summary: Linstead. Oneshot. Speculation for the S3 premiere. "Because out of all the injuries, the one he feels the most is the loss of his partner, and Jay doesn't know what to think about her return."


**Author's Note:** This fic is speculation for what happens in 3x01 and is based entirely upon spoilers and short clips we've been given. If you don't want to be spoiled before the premiere, then I suggest closing out this tab and maybe coming back after September 30th to see how far off base I was.

* * *

 _I was there for you in your darkest times; I was there for you in your darkest nights._

 _But I wonder where were you when I was at my worst, down on my knees?_

 _And you said you had my back._

–"Maps" by Maroon 5

The fingers of his left hand press gently against the bruised skin just above his hipbone, and he involuntarily winces at the slight pressure applied. The pain throbs deep beneath his fingers; his kidney still screaming from where he was sucker punched in the side over and over again. And his whole body is racked with pain as he shifts his weight against the metal floor of the ambulance, as he drapes his right arm across his lap and tries not to stare at the purple-blackish color ringing around his wrist.

The ropes and the tape have left nasty welts and bruises; thick bands of discoloration that are only going to grow worse as the day drags into the night. Fresh blood trickles from the corner of his forehead down towards the one eye that isn't swollen and bruised, and Jay bends his head downward to brush his forehead against the starched, blue fabric covering his shoulder. Allows the fresh blood to mix and mingle with the blood already caked onto his shirt because this shirt and these pants and the matching jacket – wherever that ended up – are going straight into the trash as soon as he gets home.

He's anxious to leave having already signed the form absolving the city and Ambulance 61 of any responsibility should something happen to him after they drive off. Already listened to Antonio call him an idiot for going against medical advice; already told Voight that, with all due respect, he's been poked and prodded enough today.

Because all he wants to do is go home, drink a beer, and take a hot shower. Wash the stench of blood and sweat and fear off of his body; wash the sensation of her warm, soft hand against his cheek and then against the bruises on his chest off his body.

Because out of all the injuries – the ache in his side from where he was hit repeatedly, the throbbing in his shoulder from where it was twerked by the ropes stringing him upward, the pounding in his head from where he was punched in the face – the one he feels the most is the loss of his partner, and Jay doesn't know what to think about her return.

Because she looked at him with dead, vacant eyes hidden behind dark-tinted glasses and said she was no longer his partner. Left him with no choice but to realize that everything Voight was saying about Erin being gone was true. To volunteer for the risky undercover gig down at Midway where backup wasn't assured because he already didn't have a partner, so what did it matter?

Yet she came back. Pressed small yet strong hands against the lacerations on his chest and promised him in a low, gravelly voice that she was going to get him out of there. And he had squinted through his swollen eyelid and looked straight at the murky pain lurking behind her gaze; lolled his head to the side so he could look at her with his one good eye and see for certain that his partner was there. Still broken and lost but sticking to the promise she made before she fell down that dark, dark hole to always have his back.

"So much for you having nice suits."

The breathy quip catches him off guard, and there's a quick jolt of pain in his neck when he lifts his head up to level his gaze with hers. She almost seems to reconsider approaching him under the heat of his gaze, but his lips twitch upward involuntarily into a smile at the memory – he could really go for trading in his suit for a hoodie, right now. She takes one more step forward drawing his attention away from her face to the blood staining both the front of her red t-shirt and her forearms.

He had heard the glass shatter in the other room after Keyes announced that his crew should kill him first and make Erin watch, after he had been force-marched from the couch back towards the room with the concrete floors where he was strung up and beaten. The two men dragging him by bound arms had seemed uneasy at the noise; tossed each other worried glances as they silently wondered if they should reach for the guns strapped to their hips.

Hesitated for a moment too long so the two goons were ill prepared for when Erin appeared around the corner with a gun in her hand and blood on her shirt stalking Keyes's crew like prey. She had managed fired off two shots in quick succession over the noise of their – _his_ – unit announcing their presence in the house as they cleared the other rooms. Had taken two steps towards him before Dawson busted in the room, brushed right past her, and immediately started checking on Jay's condition.

They had been separated then – Erin with Voight inside Keyes' house talking in low, hushed whispers and Jay with Antonio outside in the ambulance as Brett and Chili checked him over. He could barely answer Antonio's questions because his thoughts were dominated by one – _Erin's here?_ – and he could barely hold his gaze steady on Brett's finger because his one good eye kept sliding over to the front door of Keyes' house in hopes of finding an answer.

Now, his gaze is steady on her – so hard and unwavering that Erin shifts her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other – and his question is answered by the way she keeps her eyes steady on him despite her discomfort. Almost like she's daring him to accuse of her of being drunk or high again.

He already knows she's not. Her hand was steady when she pulled the trigger; her breath was back to smelling like mint toothpaste instead of mint juleps. He tears his eyes away from hers because the haze of pain in her eyes is no longer dulled by drugs and alcohol and that fact alone is causing hope to well up inside him and making his heart pound so loudly in his chest that all the aches and pains feel like small pinpricks in comparison.

And he's not entirely sure he can let himself go down that path again because when he was strung up by his hands, when fists were slamming into him so hard that his ears were ringing, his thoughts were not of his own well-being or of his brother or of his fractured relationship with his father. Rather, all he could think about was Erin and how he'd never get his partner back out of her dark hole if this was the end.

He tries to shake away the memory, but the quick jerk of his head from side to side causes pain to shoot up and down in his spine and a grimace pulls at his lips before he can stop it. His small, breathy groan of pain and the press of his right fingers against the bandaged laceration on his side are met with her sharp intake of breath and then the touch of her fingers against those of his left hand.

The touch is brief as she pulls away as soon as he lifts his gaze, but the feeling spreads from his fingertips up his arm and then down his side amplifying the sensation still lingering from where she touched him before. He half expects her to cross her arms, to offer him a sassy smile, and to make some suggestive comment about how that's all he's going to get from this professional partnership. But that was before they stopped being partners, and now her arms hang limply by her side as she shifts hesitant eyes from his to the ambulance and the pile of bloody gauze beside him.

"Are you okay?"

"Are you?" Jay questions through gritted teeth, but his hardened features soften and twist into another frown when she flinches. She shifts her weight from side to side again as she refuses to meet his gaze, and Jay vacillated on his decision to employ the tough love Voight has been championing because all Jay wants to do is reach out and grab her.

Hug her. Shake her. Thank her. Check for himself that the bloodstains on her body aren't from her.

"Does it matter?"

The crack in her voice causes him to flinch, and the resulting pain from his movements causes him to flinch again. She sounds so broken and pained – not at all hardened like she had been when he confronted her about the state of their partnership – and he warily sweeps his eyes up and down the length of her body.

"Erin," Jay begins. His own voice cracks over her name, and he raises his right hand up to rub against his forehead as he tries to think of what else to say. Ends up scraping his fingers against the drying blood and the still open wound at the base of his hairline before he can catch himself in time.

At his hiss of pain, Erin shifts her eyes from the bloody gauze to meet his, and for the briefest of moments they hold each gaze. His lungs scream at him to take a breath as his weary eyes drill into hers, as he plumbs into the depths of her pain and hesitation and – dare he say – relief that she hasn't allowed him to see. Not for weeks. Probably not ever.

And then her eyes follow his as he sweeps them down her body once more, as he tries to figure out if her body is shaking because of the spike in adrenaline or because she's wounded or because she's coming down from her high. Erin lifts her arms up, splays out her fingers as though she's surrendering, and softly, calmly assures him that none of this is her blood.

"That's not what I'm asking," Jay replies with eyes heavy with sadness and a small shake of his head. He tries to sit up straighter, but his back is screaming out in pain and his arms are throbbing with a different kind of ache.

A constant pain that morphine won't sedate because he wants to be hit, wants to feel the joshing crack of her knuckles against his bicep as she tells him that this – the ability to sit in the back of an ambulance and be more concerned about whether or not she's off that treacherous path he couldn't follow than his own health – is why he has backup.

"I don't know."

He doesn't know what he expected her to say, but those three words and the accompanying shrug of her shoulders causes his own shoulders to slump. She's always been honest with him – pretty brutally, usually – but the last couple of weeks have been one lie after another followed by one truth after another that he didn't want to hear, and Jay has no idea what to do with an 'I don't know' when it comes to how she's coping. Doesn't know if he should be research rehabs in Chicago or asking for a hug goodbye.

"So this," he begins trailing off as he swallows the lump in his throat, as he fails once again to suppress the hope that lurks just behind the concern in his words, "you being here was just a onetime thing?

There's a long pause filled in by the scuffle of suspects being lead past in handcuffs, uniformed officers telling civilians to stay behind the yellow tape, and journalists from the local NBC affiliate trying to log their on-air report of the scene, and then her gravelly voice interrupts the noise to honestly, hesitantly repeat her earlier three-word answer once more.

"I don't know."

The fact that her answer isn't a firm no causes Jay's lip to involuntarily twitch upward into a smile, and he can tell by the way her eyebrows knit together in confusion and her eyes fill with an unreadable expression that she saw the grin before he fight it. Emotion that slides from her face when Antonio brushes past her once again, when he clamps down on Jay's good shoulder, and says he'll give him a ride home. Emotion that changes in furious concern when Erin realizes that Jay isn't going to the hospital.

And he can tell that she wants to tell him not to get stupid on her as Jay slowly slides off the floor of the ambulance to his feet; wants to wrap her arm around his waist and help support his weight when he uneasily takes a step forward. But he shakes his head at her because she's neither his partner nor the woman who used to kiss him stupid until he was the one leaning against the wall for support and he can't let himself start thinking of her in that way. Besides, he can feel the heat of Voight's glare on him, and Jay knows he's going to end up at Chicago Med if he can't make it to Dawson's car without assistance.

Jay takes one step then two keeping his right arm curled around his waist and his posture slightly slumped to abate the pain with every step. Yet his gaze still lingers on Erin, on the way she watches him with evident concern on her face, and he forces himself to swallow the lump in his throat and take two steps back the way he came. To stand right next to her – his bloodied, blue shirt flapping in the wind so it brushes up against her bloodied, red one – and offer her a quick yet sad smile as he stares down at her.

"Thanks," he says, pauses, and then continues, "for having my back."

Erin doesn't fire back with an "always" nor does she lightly punch him in the arm in response. Instead, she silently nods her head up and down and then allows her gaze to linger on him until Voight calls her name, until Jay turns away and stiffly hobbles towards Antonio's car.

Sliding into the passenger seat was painful enough, but Antonio's less than smooth driving and the seat belt cutting into his shoulder with every sudden stop amplifies the aches and pains Jay feels. Makes him wish not for the first time since Erin turned in her badge that his partner was back in the driver's seat because Erin, at least, knows how to smoothly switch from the gas to the break.

"If I was smarter, I'd take you straight to Chicago Med," Antonio announces with a sidelong glance at the younger detective's bloodstained shirt and a quick glance in the mirror as he changes lanes.

"Good thing you don't have to be intelligent to be in Intelligence," Jay quips back as he curls his hand tighter around the handle right above the car door. The quick right turn onto the main street through his neighborhood pushes him up against the car door, and Jay winces as searing pain shoots up and down his side while Antonio, for his part, manages an appreciative chuckle over Jay's rather lame comeback because at least if he's making jokes, Jay's not dying.

There's a long pause as Antonio speeds towards Jay's apartment followed by a sudden, jerky stop as he's forced to slam on the breaks at the red light. Jay barely has time to brace himself against the car door for the stop, barely has time to catch his breath before Dawson is lowering his voice and answering the question on Halstead's mind.

"She volunteered. Showed up at the district and said she'd do it."

"So you didn't call her?" Jay asks keeping his gaze fixed on the intersection in front of them and his body pressed up against the car door. He knows how Voight works, knows Intelligence would have kept this all in house for as long as possible, and he can't figure out how news of his kidnapping would leak out to Bunny's bar or wherever the hell Erin was drinking herself into a stupor without Voight or Dawson or someone making a call. "She just showed up on her own?"

"Guess so," Antonio replies with a shrug as he stomps on the gas. The car revs forward first off the lines demarcating the crosswalk in the street, and Dawson is easily able to maneuver in front of the blue minivan in order to make a quick right turn onto Jay's street. And then he takes another hard, sidelong glance at Jay frowning because he knows exactly where Jay's mind is going. "She gave up the badge, Jay. She made her choice, and one day isn't goin' to change that. If she doesn't want it, she doesn't deserve it."

"She's my partner," Jay retorts bristling at Dawson's words, at the suggestion that he should give up on her again even after she showed up for him.

"Is she?" Dawson questions tersely as he pulls the car to the side of the road in front of Jay's building, as he stops right behind the gray sedan with New York plates parked out front.

"Great," Jay mumbles ignoring the question as he reaches to unclasp the seat belt and shoves open the door. His whole body screams at him as he hauls himself out of the car, but he determinedly shakes off the hand Antonio offers him and walks stiffly towards the front door of his apartment building because so much for a cold beer, a hot shower, and five minutes alone to think about what happened today. To second guess his actions during the drop; to second guess everything he said to Erin afterwards.

"Jesus Christ," Will whistles as Jay makes his way up the stairs of his apartment building. The older Halstead had been leaning up against the wall outside Jay's apartment as he waited, but he immediately shifts forward as he takes in the sight of Jay's bloodied shirt, bandaged torso, and the right arm still limply held across his chest. "You should be at a hospital."

"So should you," Jay replies as he fishes for the keys in his pocket. His hand quivers slightly as he forces the key into the lock, and he grimaces at the pain shooting through his wrist as he flips open the deadbolt. Jay pushes open the door with his foot, sidesteps as his brother pushes his way into the apartment, and then glances over his right shoulder with his non-swollen eye offering Dawson a sincere smile. "Thanks for the ride and, uh, for today."

"Sure. You call me if you need anything, ya hear?" Dawson says before dropping his voice lower, before taking a step closer towards Jay and reaching out to squeeze his uninjured shoulder. "Don't let what happened today mess with your head, okay? You're good police."

"Yeah," Jay agrees as Dawson quickly gives him a hug muttering something about him being glad that Jay's okay and how he'll see him in a few days, but they both know the kidnapping and his ability to be a good cop with his head in the game after today isn't what Dawson is referring to. And then Dawson is headed back down the hallway with his hands jammed into his pockets while Jay steps into his apartment and is immediately instructed by Will to take a seat.

He groans audibly when he sinks down onto the couch, flinches when Will begins poking and prodding at his wounds with gloved hands. His brother's medical bag lays open on the couch beside him; syringes, bandages, and what Jay hopes are some strong painkillers spilling forth from the bag.

"How's Erin?"

"Huh?" Jay replies slightly startled as he shifts his gaze from contents of the medical bag to the eyebrows furrowed in concern on his brother's face.

"She's your partner, right?" Will questions as he peels away the medical tape holding the gauze in place against Jay's side and runs his fingers along the wound. "Figure if you look this bad, she can't look much better."

"She's–" Jay begins but then he trails off because he doesn't quite know how to answer. Erin's not his partner no matter what he told Antonio, and even though she wasn't drunk or high today, she sure as hell is not fine or okay. The uncomfortable silence becomes a hiss of pain as Will pinches together the wound, as Jay's older brother tries to determine if Jay will need stitches or not.

"So what happened?"

"Undercover gig went south," Jay replies wincing as Will bumps his right arm in a silent command for him to move it out of the way. He very carefully drapes it over the back of the sofa and then lets his head loll backwards against the sofa, lets his eyes close when Will begins rooting around in his bag for a needle or a stapler or whatever the hell he's going to use to stitch him up.

He hates hospitals – a fact that hasn't changed since he spent time in one in the desert of Afghanistan when Mouse saved his life, since his mom got sick and spent hours at her bedside watching her waste away, since he got shot while working undercover in Gangs – and he grimaces over the thought of his apartment being turned into a field hospital.

"And?" Will prompts as he tears open a packet of white, stitch strips. The wound isn't deep enough to need anything more; the amount of blood a byproduct of the length of the gash rather than the depth.

"And Erin got me out," Jay replies as though the outcome is the most obvious thing in the world, but the hint of marvel in his voice fails to slip past Will without notice and the older Halstead looks uneasily at his brother. There's more to the story, more that Jay's not telling him, and Will isn't exactly sure how to broach the topic as he strategically places the white, stitch strips along Jay's side.

They spend the next forty minutes in relative silence other than Jay's sharp intakes of breath and hisses of pain as Will runs his hands up and down Jay's torso and back checking for bruises, lacerations, and signs of internal bleeding. The bloodstained shirt ends up in a ball on Jay's living room floor only to be joined by discarded packets of stitch strips, antiseptic wipes, and bloodied gauze over the forty minutes it takes for Will to complete his thorough once over.

"Alright," Will says peeling off his gloves and tossing them onto the top of the pile of trash at his feet. "You okay to take a shower unassisted while I run out and pick you up some painkillers, or do you need a sponge bath?"

"Get out of here," Jay replies with a short, gruff laugh that causes his chest to ache and a quick shake of his head that causes his neck to throb. And this time he accepts the hand outstretched to him, appreciates the offer as Will helps pull him to his feet because Jay is pretty sure he would have stayed parked on that couch for the next three days without it. Would have given up on his plans for a beer and a shower in favor of sleep and minimizing his physical pain.

"And pick up your trash before you go," Jay calls over his shoulder as he takes slow, steady steps towards the open doorway of his bedroom. He reaches out to brace himself against the wall, grabs onto the edge of the dresser to help steady himself as he yanks open the top drawer and fishes out a pair of sweatpants.

"Okay, Mom," Will calls after his younger brother with fake irritation, and Jay sighs – eyelids drooping closed for a moment – at the sound of the front door slamming shut because he knows he'll step out of that shower to find his blue shirt and all of Will's medical supplies still littering the floor.

Will's inability to pick up after himself used to be a big bone of contention for the two of them back when they shared a room as kids, and things haven't changed in the twenty years since their mom used to threaten them with promises that they should just wait until their father got home. The memory causes Jay to frown as he steps into the bathroom and kicks off his dress shoes, to wonder if Will stepping out for a moment wasn't also a ploy to get time alone to call their dad and tell him what happened given how adamant Will has been in pushing for their reconciliation since he rolled back into town.

Jay lifts the fingers of his right hand to his forehead at the thought yet manages to stop himself just in time before he can nick the strip Will applied to the cut at the base of his hairline. And with a heavy sigh and a grimace over the way his wrists are twisted with every movement, Jay works on undoing his belt and sliding his pants and boxer briefs down his legs. Kicks them aside and twists the handle of the shower to the hottest temperature possible.

The hot water scalds and his bruises sting at the relentless pounding of the water against his skin, but Jay remains under the showerhead as the steam billows up around him with his left hand pressed against the tiled wall and his non-swollen, right eye fixated on the red water swirling around his feet. Couple of months ago and he would have been focused on why things went south trying to figure out what he could have done differently or how he should have reacted to the quickly changing conditions.

Now, all he can think about is how Erin showed up, how she opened the door for her own return because he can live and hope and work with an 'I don't know' when it comes to whether or not today was a onetime thing. Because she's not saying that she's no longer his partner; because she showed up like she promised she would back when being his partner was all she could offer him. And if that's all he gets – Erin as his partner, Erin having his back – then that's good enough for now. Forever.

So, instead, he stays in the shower until the water turns tepid and cold psychoanalyzing what her return – however brief – means and everything he said to her in that ambulance. Whether he should have stuck around; whether he should text her and thank her again. Stays in there until Will starts banging on the door wondering aloud if Jay's passed out in there.

It takes him a moment to switch off the water, to get Will to hear him over his incessant banging, and Jay blindly reaches for the towel hanging on the back of the door. The water has relaxed his tense muscles, but the passage of time has causes the swelling around his eye to increase and he can barely make out the rim of the bathtub as he steps out of the shower or the ledge of the sink where he left his sweatpants.

His muscles are no longer relaxed by the time he pulls the sweatpants up his legs so they sit slung low on his hips, and he's back to favoring his left hand as he wrenches open the bathroom door. The sun has already set behind the taller building that comprises the view outside his bedroom window, but the light from the television in the living room is enough to guide him out of his bedroom and he steps through the wide doorframe to find Will seated on his couch still in his blue surgical scrubs with his feet propped up on the coffee table and a beer bottle in his hand.

"Hour long shower? We need to get you a girlfriend," Will says with a smirk without looking away from the commercial on TV before bringing the bottle to his lips and taking a long swig. And then ignoring the frown on Jay's face, he gestures with the bottle still in his hand towards the kitchen behind him and says, "Pills are on the kitchen counter. Take two every six to eight hours."

Jay slowly shuffles into the kitchen stopping first at the fridge to grab a bottle of beer before heading towards the sink where the orange pill bottle with the white top sits on top of the counter. His wrists – now a solidly dark purple color – scream at him as he pops off the bottle cap, and he is still working on twisting open the white cap of the pill bottle when there is a soft yet firm knock at the door.

"I've got it. It's probably the takeout I ordered," Will announces from the living room, and Jay barely glances up fast enough to see Will striding past the kitchen towards the front door. Far too busy concentrating on opening up the painkillers; far too busy counting out two pills with his swollen eye to care about opening the door himself.

"Hey, Erin."

The name causes him to freeze mid-toss of the pills into his mouth, and a lump forms so quickly in Jay's throat that he has to take a long swig of the beer on the counter in order to force himself to swallow. His muscles have stiffen in the ten minutes since he got out of the shower, in the ten seconds since he heard her name, and Jay takes slow, wooden steps towards the front door.

"Yeah, Voight called me because the idiot refused to go to the hospital," his brother announces from the doorway in response to Erin's inaudible question. "I don't how you put up with him every day."

The frame of his body blocks Jay's view, and he has to push Will aside with a gentle shove to his brother's bicep to get him to step aside. Barely manages to catch Erin's smile over Will's words before she catches sight of him, before her hazy gaze softens and her lips dip down into an uncertain, hesitant frown.

"Hey," she whispers softly, and he repeats it back to her. Each of them staring so intently at the other that they miss the way Will darts his head side to side as he watches them, but his comment that he's going to give them a moment snaps Erin's gaze from the younger to the older Halstead and then back again as she takes a step back.

"I'm interrupting," she murmurs softly as the moves to turn away. And despite the aches and the pains, Jay nearly lunges towards her reaching out to snag her arm with his hand and try to convince her to stay.

"No, it's fine," he promises as her gaze remains fixated on the welts around his wrists. He has to release his hold on his arm and dip his head to get her to look up at him, to get her to stop staring at the bruises on his wrists in favor of the bruises on his face.

And Jay force himself to suppress the grimace of pain on his features when his neck cricks so he doesn't give her the wrong idea. Although, honestly, it doesn't take that much effort because the fact that she's here, that she came to see him tonight causes his lips to part in a smile.

"You wanna come in?"

"Uh, Voight," Erin says as her gaze shifts from looking inside his apartment to his face and then to the hallway she just traversed, "he's waiting for me downstairs."

The smile deepens slightly because he's glad to hear that she's spent the past couple with Voight instead of with Bunny or those new so-called friends of her he had the displeasure of meeting earlier. And then he forces himself to frown, purses his lips, and shakes his head side to side.

"Not sure how I feel about you telling Voight where I live. It's gonna suck having to sneak down the fire escape of my own place."

"He has access to personnel files," she saucily reminds him without missing a beat and he smiles in response to her tone because it makes it clear she thinks he's an idiot and that right there is the most normal things have felt in a while. That, and the fact that she keeps stealing glances at his chest, at the way his sweatpants hang low on his hips just like she used to do when he'd leave her in his bed while he went in search of rehydration.

"Uh," Erin stutters out when she realizes she's been caught staring, and she crosses her arms across her chest as the pain deepens in her eyes and she uneasily shifts her gaze from side to side. "I'm gonna be stayin' with Voight for a while. Uh, get away from my mom and stuff."

"Living with Voight? Sounds...fun," he quips with a grimace in the hopes of making her laugh, but Erin just sort of shrugs and Jay can tell she's not entirely sold on the idea. That maybe she's taking two steps forward, but she's right on the edge of taking four steps back. "If this is gonna help you deal with what you've got going on upstairs, then I'm really happy for you, Erin."

"Yeah," Erin replies in a flat tone, and Jay tries to force himself to smile even as the lump in his throat grows thicker and harder to swallow as she takes a small step towards him. As she looks up at him with eyes still dulled by pain and says, "I've gotta ask you something."

"Shoot," he manages to force out despite the fact that he's holding his breath, despite the fact that his body is screaming at him to sit down.

"If, uh, if I come back to the unit, would you still–"

"Yes," he interjects breaking out in a grin and refusing to allow her to finish the question because he knows her, knows the answer to what she's about to ask him is a resounding yes. She's the toughest cop he knows, she makes him a better cop, and she's his partner. End of discussion.

"No strings?"

"Erin, you're my partner," he interrupts again with forceful determination, and she seems almost taken aback by how assertive he is. Almost as though the drugs and the alcohol and the weeks apart have caused her to forget how he can be in the interrogation room, forget how their partnership was the one thing he cared about preserving when they decided to cool it. "You want me to add strings to that? Fine, then I get to drive more."

"More than on your birthday and Friday the thirteenth?" She clarifies before scrunching up her face and shifting her gaze to the ceiling as though she's taking his demands under careful consideration. "How about minor US holidays? Memorial Day? Columbus Day?"

"Deal," he readily agrees because he really doesn't care about getting to drive. Not if it means Erin comes back; not if it means that she gets off the dark path she's been walking down.

And he holds her gaze as he smiles at her, as he finally gets to see a little bit of brightness in her eyes through both his swollen left eye and his unaffected right one. Brightness that spreads as her lips lift into a smile; brightness that dims ever so slight as the phone peeking out of the pocket of her jeans buzzes loudly.

"It's Voight," she informs him without even bothering to look at the phone. "He's got me on a pretty short leash so, uh, I should go."

"Okay," Jay agrees because he knows it's probably for the best, knows that Voight's been here before with her and got her to the good place she was at when Jay first met her. "If you need–"

"I know," Erin interrupts, "you've got my back."

"Always," Jay promises her softly, and Erin quickly nods her head up and down in a silent affirmation that she already knows this as she turns on her heels, as she starts to make her way back down the hallway towards the stairs. Pauses when Jay calls after her and says, "I'm gonna take a few days of furlough. Voight's orders. So when you steal your chair back from Ruzek, don't let him take mine, okay?"

"Yeah," Erin agrees before taking the last few steps down the hallway, before disappearing down the stairs to rejoin Voight outside. And Jay slowly, stiffly reenters his apartment shutting the front door behind him and sidestepping over the trash his brother has yet to pick up the trash littered across the floor before joining Will on the couch.

The beer bottle still clutched in his hand has warmed by now, but he takes an large gulp of the liquid anyways as the local NBC affiliate covers the riveting story of the public library's new computer classes. He wonders briefly if Will was hoping to get more details on what happened to him from the local news, but knows his brother will remain in the dark unless he clues him in because he hid out in the ambulance and followed Voight's rule on this one – no interviews, no pictures in the paper.

"Did Erin quit?"

Will's question answers the other thing Jay was wondering – how much his brother overheard of his conversation – and Jay merely parrots back the line Voight kept feeding everyone in the district about how she's just taking some time away to clear her head before taking another swig of his beer.

"But she's coming back," Will says with a finality to his statement rather than a question.

"Looks like it," Jay replies unable to suppress his grin as his runs his thumb over the rim of the glass bottle, as he thinks about how this day begin with Erin saying she was out and ended with her saying she wants back in. And he glances up to see a smirk on Will's face; immediately begins badgering his brother to explain why he's looking at him that way.

"You should've kissed her," Will replies in the tone he used to use when they were younger and he was the big brother offering advice to his dumb, kid brother. "Near death experience where a hot girl saves my life? I would have kissed her."

"Shut up," Jay replies with a laugh because he'd be lying if he said the thought hadn't crossed his mind when Erin bent down over him on that sofa, when her soft hands pressed against his chest as she promised that she get him out.

Right now, though, he knows that's the worst kind of advice for this situation, knows that he cares far more about getting Erin back as his partner and getting her to the point where she can stand on her own two feet than anything else. And maybe one day in the future?

"If you're not going to make a move, then I will," Will threatens with a smirk and sidelong glance at the lacerations on his brother's bare chest. "Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? I'm clearly the hotter, smarter Halstead. She won't be able to resist me."

"Oh, definitely," Jay agrees with a snort of laughter before taking another swig of his beer, and he smiles against the rim of the bottle as he adds, "Especially after they find your body at the bottom of the lake."


End file.
